In a major statement of intent for this season in the Champions League, Bayern Munich turned on the style, and then some, smashing Roma for seven goals in their Group E encounter at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.
When Bayern Munich are in the mood, there are very few teams in the world that can stand up to them, and Roma felt the Bundesliga champions' full wrath in a 7-1 demolition.
Arjen Robben opened the scoring for the 2013 Champions League winners in just the ninth minute, and from there on it was absolute carnage as Mario Gotze, Robert Lewandowski and another one from Robben put Bayern Munich 4-0 ahead with barely a half hour gone.
It would get worse for Roma, so impressive on their Champions League return heading into this game, as Thomas Muller fired Bayern into a 5-0 lead from the spot.
Gervinho ensured that the home side would at least leave the field with a goal to their name with the former Arsenal winger scoring in the 66th minute to make it 5-1.
However, Bayern were not done as Franck Ribery and Xherdan Shaqiri scored in the space of two minutes to complete the annihilation.
"I'm still convinced Roma have a very good team -- they've shown that this season -- but we should pay a big compliment to us, to all the players, but also to the coaching staff who prepared this game in the way we played, the way we created chances and scored goals," said man of the match Robben to UEFA's official website. "There were some great goals.
"I've never really experienced anything like this, especially not against a good team because Roma have a great team. They started well -- they started here against CSK Moscow very, very easy, they drew in Manchester [City] -- so we expected a very tough game, but we really controlled the game and dominated.
"They had no answer to our attacking football so the game was very quickly decided and after it was 3-0, for them it was getting more and more difficult. They were disappointed, their heads went down and we used the space."
That is a bit of an understatement from Robben, of course, such was the prowess of this undoubtedly formidable team. However, even manager Pep Guardiola tried to temper the victory by insisting it was a one-off.
"We have a few things to improve and one of them is that we gave Roma too many chances at the start of the second half," Guardiola was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.
"This game is an exception, an incident. It's not the difference between the two teams, we will see that in two weeks [for the return leg in Munich]. We got a quick goal and that relaxed us, then we got another. Rome are a team who always play well, but we were very aggressive, made the right decisions and found space."
